Solar panels-practical???

During the congressional debates there was a lot of talk about
alternative energy sources. They discussed wind power and roof mounted
solar panels. Where I live, the roof is covered with a foot (or more)
of snow during most of the winter. Solar panels would be useless.
---MIKE---

Some friends of mine claim they basically pay nothing for
their electricity. This is in NW Washington State. I believe
they said they paid about $16,000 for their system. They
are careful about their usage it seemed.
Bob

I don't know the life expectancy of panels, but having a house with
only $100/month electric bill, it would take me 13 years for 100%
payback with a $0 monthly bill. So would I be robing Peter{electric
company} to pay Paul {solar panel installer}?
tom @ www.Consolidated-Loans.info

Quite a long time. I believe most of the major manufacturers of PVs have
something around 25 year warrantees. If they warranty them for 25 years
I'd expect real world life with modest care in an average environment to
be 40 years or better.
Pete C.

When they actually get 25 years of experience with the current
technology I would believe that. I also doubt the warranty covers
anything but total failure. Your problem is these things start losing
efficiency over time so your 10kw array may only be giving you 3 or 4
kw after a while. The warranty doesn't do anything for a lightning
strike, hail or a wind blown debris.

The warranty I looked at specifically indicated the amount of power
production guaranteed at the 25 yr mark. I think it was something like
80% of rated capacity.
As for experience, they do indeed have in excess of 25 years of real
world experience since the basic technology hasn't really changed much
at all. The accelerated testing chambers they use also do a good job.
Pete C.

More than careful methinks. Going off-grid with solar electric
means that they have to be _extremely_ miserly with electric
power. Things like 12V lighting systems, propane powered fridges,
etc.
You can't go off grid if you're into standard consumer appliances.

My question would then be, if they're actually living in this
place full time, do they get a _real_ reduction in monthly electrical
bills once you factor in maintenance? Completely ignoring amortization
of the PV cells, the amount of power you can feed back from even
a large investment in PV is quite small.

Somebody did it locally - we have much less snow - and discussions
indicated a payback period of 20+ years. Don't think that counted
maintenance or putting the money in the bank and collecting interest.
I think it is a stupid idea to install solar panels today but strongly
recommend all environmentalists get them to start the ball rolling ;)
Frank

If you use photovoltaic shingles, instead of special-purpose
panels, you get to subtract that cost of re-reroofing from
your capital expense.
http://www.oksolar.com/roof /
And somewhere I saw solar panels that stood in for the
entire roof-decking, but I can't find them now.

There are different types of solar panels.
One type converts sunlight to electricity, at whatever efficiency--I think
they're up to 15-20% now?
The other type simply captures the sun's heat, w/ much higher efficiency
(theoretically near-100%) using stuff like "selective surfaces", which get
super-hot in the sun.
These, being hot, would not be affected by snow, and could proly provide
most of your winter heat--assuming enough sun.
The ideal array would then be some *ratio* of solar electric to solar heat
square footage, which would vary with latitude--mostly solar electric in the
south, mostly solar heat in the north.
HD is now hawking solar electric panels, $25K-50K installed.

My BIL had a set of panels like that 15 years ago. Worked pretty good, then
they broke and the company he got them from was out of business. I chose
not to question him about it any further, so I don't know why someone else
couldn't have fixed them.
Much of the world gets their hot water from solar heaters. Except us of
course, cause we're rich.

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